PMA said February sales marked an improvement over the past few months, which had all seen sales declines from the prior year.

However, PMA pointed out that February 2008 digital camera sales were up 17 percent compared to February 2007.

More bad news: year-to-date sales in February of this year were down 1 percent and had been up 3 percent in February 2008.

Meanwhile, the resolution factor continued to entice consumer purchases in the month, after 42 percent of units were sold with 10 or more megapixels. Only 15 percent of cameras sold were fewer than 8 megapixels, PMA said.

Looking back to February 2008, only 12 percent of cameras sold were 10 megapixels or more, and 60 percent were fewer than 8 megapixels, the report states.

Digital print volumes are also being hammered by the difficult economy, with growth rates slowing down significantly, according to PMA Marketing Research. Some printing methods as well experienced declines in February 2009, compared to previous years.

PMA said overall printing volumes were up 3 percent in February 2009 compared to 25 percent in the same month last year. Online ordering activity, the fastest growing method of printing, grew at a rate of 19 percent in February 2009, compared to a rate of 51 percent in 2008.